So for my project I want to focus on Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Both of these men have been advocates of internet privacy and agree that our personal rights are being invaded. I would like to actually draw attention to Snowden’s Ted Talk which he did through a computer and how he said that it’s time that a Magna Carta be created for the internet.

Overall my topic will be about our internet use and what should and should not be kept private. We are giving up freedom so readily in the hopes that it will give us more protection but are those results even occurring anymore.

We even see companies who are either giving up our own information or being hacked by our own government so that everything we do can be tracked now. Are many of these things even legal?

I’m not too sure how I’m going to approach the presentation as of now but I have the topic in mind already. I feel that a long paper discussing these violations will drag on and not capture the readers attention so I will try to create something a bit more interactive.

After reading the novel I think back to the character Mae. We know companies that are similar to the Circle but of course not as drastic. These companies always employ young adults and it makes sense that Mae was chosen. Being so young the company is able to mold you into anything they want. Mae, being so young, was basically fully immersed in this brand new life which allowed her the opportunity that people work there whole life for. They are able to show her all these new gadgets, help her parents through the company insurance, and feed into the idea of being the center of attention.

As Mae continues on we see her opinion of the Circle changing. At first she is reluctant about being in a lifestyle where her every move needs to be put out on the internet. Eventually she goes so far as to have her every waking move being watched by anyone with access to the internet. It’s interesting to see how she loses her own idea and become “transparent.” Mae is described as the face of the Circle eventually and her life is only about this new life.

At the end of the novel I definitely felt like I disliked Mae because she allowed herself to pretty much be a product of the Circle.

If we keep an idea to ourselves is it really theft? To say theft means that there must have been ownership to an idea. I don’t think that any idea can be owned by any one person but there are limits to these things. I don’t feel it necessary to express every waking moment in hopes for likes or comments. I believe that if I need to keep any single thought to myself that it isn’t theft.

Let us look at it from any other direction. A scientist has discovered the cure for cancer and decides to keep that information to himself. He then decides to sell this information to any one country for the highest bid. He is pretty much robbing the world of a cure.

There is definitely a fine line to what we should be sharing and not. Currently I don’t think people know what should be shared and what not so they decided that nothing should ever be kept private. Maybe we need to start teaching privacy and what should and should not be shared. There is nothing wrong with keeping private but to have knowledge that would benefit everyone and not share it might be theft.

Overall this may bring up a different question for the future. Will keeping an idea private ever become illegal?

There were multiple connections I made as I read through the circle that were kind of creepy.

The first one occurred when the class mentioned that this company, which is trying to connect the world, is cult-like. This brought to mind Apple and the “Cult of Apple.” It was brought up a few years that the part of the brain used during religious acts is also used when Apple enthusiast attend grand openings or see Apple ads. This brings to mind that Apple performs like a cult similar to how people feel about The Circle. The name of the novel itself made me think of Apple’s soon to be second campus which is actually I. The form of a huge circle.

This sounds crazy as I’m writing this but another connection I pulled from the book is when Mae heard the idea of a tracker which was at designed to be implanted under the skin and research was done to implant it into the brain. In the book the purpose of this device was to keep track of lost children which I’m sure we would all agree is a great idea but what happens when it gets pushed for an older crowd. Realistically this device would take years to get approved but for now we have RFID chips. These little devices, the size of a grain of rice, are currently will soon be added to products such as packages of foods and anything with an expiration date. The purpose of this is to confirm that products are hitting the shelves before they expire.

As we continue to discuss the book we are continually finding connections between this creepy “dystopian” universe to the world we live in right now.

From the list of digital stories, I think the most interesting one is the Science of Storytelling. There is definitely a way to tell every story so that you are able to keep your audience engaged. Doing it wrong would probably put the crowd to sleep. It’s interesting how the article says that to better convey any message we should tell them as a story. When a message is told as a story it engages certain parts of the brain that relate to the story. So speaking of man running to get to work would engage the part of the brain responsible for motor functions. The article also says that stories are better remembered. This is definitely true. In some of the classes I’ve experienced in St. John’s I find myself in auto pilot. I wouldn’t really be interacting with the class but just be a blank and almost lifeless observer not aware of what is really going on. I believe that teaching methods need to be updated because of this. There are definitely better ways to teach that would keep a student in a constant mode of paying attention. Some teachers haver updated there methods and we can see students actually enjoying and communicating in class rather than just blending into the background.

My daily internet go to sites consist of first reading the news which I read from either from Yahoo news or BBC. Both these sites allow me to pick and choose what I want to read relating to the news. Along with these sites I also browse reddit which carries both news and entertainment information. The great thing about reddit is that it is user based so when it comes to something like the news you would most likely see first hand accounts. Aside from these sites, I also may browse sites such as hulu or netflix since I don’t really watch tv anymore. Without these sites I think all the things I would want to know would take a lot longer to find out. The newspaper and news channels are very limited on what they show. They only have so much amount of space so to what I might be interested in knowing may not be available right at the moment. This is why I prefer using the internet for such activities. It provides a quick access to any type of knowledge we would need to know.